Kris Lemsalu is an Estonian sculptor, installation artist and performer based between Tallinn and New York. Working primarily in ceramics, she builds dense assemblages that combine porcelain body fragments with textiles, fur, leather, metal and found objects. These hybrid figures move between human and animal, comic and unsettling, domestic and mythic. Sculptures can become costumes, props or stages for live music and performance, allowing her installations to shift from static objects into collaborative environments. Across the work, birth, death, love and transformation are approached through humour, bodily imagery and symbolic ritual rather than fixed narratives.
Born in Tallinn in 1985, Lemsalu studied at the Estonian Academy of Arts, Danmarks Designskole and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She represented Estonia at the 2019 Venice Biennale and received the Grand Prize of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia in 2020. Her recent activity includes the 2025 solo exhibition Nirvana at Temnikova & Kasela in Tallinn, devoted to new ceramic sculptures, and Estonian Realities at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris from 3 April to 19 July 2026. That exhibition paired a monumental installation and newly made works with art by Olga Terri and Anu Põder, placing Lemsalu’s contemporary practice within a cross-generational account of Estonian art.